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1878 in the United States

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1878 in the United States

Events from the year 1878 in the United States.

Contents

Federal Government

  • President: Rutherford B. Hayes (R-Ohio)
  • Vice President: William A. Wheeler (R-New York)
  • Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio)
  • Speaker of the House of Representatives: Samuel J. Randall (D-Pennsylvania)
  • Congress: 45th

    • Events

  • January 28 – The Yale News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States.
  • February 18 – The Lincoln County War begins in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
  • February 19 – The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison.
  • February 23 – Bland–Allison Act, leading to first minting of the Morgan dollar.
  • February 28 – Mississippi State University is created by the Mississippi Legislature (under the name The Agricultural and Mechanical College of the State of Mississippi).
  • May 2 – The Washburn "A" Mill in Minneapolis, Minnesota explodes, killing 18.
  • March 26 – University of California, Hastings College of the Law is founded.
  • July 26 – In California, the poet and American West outlaw calling himself "Black Bart" makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box is found later with a taunting poem inside.
  • August 9 – The Wallingford Tornado of 1878, the deadliest tornado in Connecticut history, destroys the town of Wallingford, killing 34 people and injuring 70 or more.
  • September 30 – The ship Priscilla arrives in Hawaii from Funchal, Madeira, marking the beginning of the Portuguese immigration to the Hawaiian Islands (1878–1913).
  • October 1 – Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) opens as Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
  • November 18 – Soprano Marie Selika Williams becomes the first African American artist to perform at the White House.

    • Undated

  • Yellow fever in Mississippi Valley kills over 13,000.
  • U.S. arbitration rejects Argentine claims to Paraguay's part of the Chaco region.
  • The Johns Hopkins University Press, America's oldest university press, is established
  • Albert Augustus Pope's Pope Manufacturing Company begins producing the Columbia high-wheel bicycle outside Boston, signalling the beginning of a bicycle craze in the U.S.
  • The Remington No. 2 typewriter, the first with a shift key enabling production of lower as well as upper case characters, is introduced.

    • Ongoing

  • Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
  • Depression of 1873–79 (1873–1879)

    • Births

  • January 29 – Walter F. George, United States Senator from Georgia from 1922 till 1957. Died in 1957.
  • February 1 – Hattie Caraway, United States Senator from Arkansas from 1931 till 1945. Died in 1950.
  • February 28 – Hugh A. Butler, United States Senator from Nebraska from 1941 till 1954. Died in 1954.
  • May 5 – Edward Gay II, United States Senator from Louisiana from 1918 till 1921. (died 1952)
  • June 4 – Thomas D. Schall, United States Senator from Minnesota from 1925 till 1935. (died 1935)
  • July 29 – James M. Slattery, United States Senator from Illinois from 1939 till 1940. Died in 1948.
  • August 2 – Nathan L. Bachman, United States Senator from Tennessee from 1933 till 1937. Died in 1937.
  • August 4 – Ernest Lundeen, United States Senator from Minnesota from 1937 till 1940. (died 1940)
  • September 14 – Scott Loftin, United States Senator from Florida in 1936. Died in 1953.

    • Deaths

  • February 11 – Charles Magill Conrad, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1842 to 1843 (born 1804)
  • March 6 – Asa Biggs, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1855 to 1858 (born 1811)
  • March 29 – Mark Hopkins, Jr., entrepreneur (born 1813)
  • May 25 – John Scott Harrison, member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio, son of William Henry Harrison, father of Benjamin Harrison (born 1804)
  • June 27 – Sidney Breese, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1843 to 1849 (born 1800)
  • October 5 – George Boyer Vashon, African-American attorney, educationalist, abolitionist, essayist and poet (born 1824)
  • November 16 – Sarah Harris Fayerweather, African-American whose 1832 admission to a Connecticut school resulted in the first integrated schoolhouse (born 1812)

    • References

    1878 in the United States Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA